A Quick Trip to Omaha

We completed the last hurdle in our paperwork relay today as we drove to Omaha to be finger printed by the USCIS at Homeland Security. The weather could have delayed us, but the expected winter storm #2 has not hit yet. Jay took the afternoon off and we took the boys with us. It was a quick errand. The staff was very nice and got us in and out quickly -- probably 15 minutes. With Christmas this week, I do not expect to receive the final form for our dossier any time soon. But I hope it will arrive early in the New Year.

Once we receive this final form, we make a copy for ourselves and send the original to our agency along with our check for the Completion of Documents Fee. We are creeping towards that $4000 total. If you find yourself able to help our cause during this season of giving, we’d be forever grateful! If you’d like to give but don’t know how, just get in touch with us here, on Facebook or give us a call or send an email and we’ll fill you in.

Stay Tuned: On Christmas Eve I will be cooking 3 Nepali dishes in honor of our daughter. Log in later this week for pictures and critiques! Merry Christmas, friends!

Snow Day

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

We've all heard that statement before. It does not apply here to our adoption. The blizzard that hit us last week not only closed schools for 3 consecutive days, but it also closed down the Omaha USCIS office on Wednesday the 9th and we were not finger printed for our 1 and final form for our dossier. Supposedly, we will be rescheduled for this appointment. How and when we will hear of that news is unknown. We'd appreciate your prayers for a quick rescheduled appointment!

Nepal is still not moving forward on adoption processing, as far as we know. Yet, we are hopeful and pray for our little Nepali girl.

In the meantime, we are ready for Christmas. The holiday parties are behind us. The shopping is done. Gifts are wrapped and under the tree. I just have to mail my Christmas cards and I hope to get those out in the next couple of days. Now to enjoy the remaining days of December doing a little holiday baking and relaxing.

Good News! Bad News.

After last week’s rather melancholy tone, we were absolutely shocked to receive 2 envelopes in Saturday’s mail from Homeland Security. We have our fingerprint appointment on December 9! What could have taken 12 weeks “seems” to be moving right along. Of course, once we are fingerprinted, no one knows how long it will take the government to process them and issue this 1 final form we are waiting for. For some, this has only taken 2 weeks. For others, this has been the hold-up. But we are once again hopeful that perhaps we can actually be done with all of our paperwork before the close of 2009 as originally planned. WOW!

Things in Nepal right now have halted, unfortunately. We received an email from our agency this week stating “internal conflicts” within the Ministry of Women and Children. I forwarded our email to friends adopting through a different agency. Their agency says that there has been further corruption in Nepal within the adoption program on behalf of some European and some American adoption agencies. When these issues can be solved is not ours to say. But things have come to a halt. No children are being matched and no travel dates are being issued for those who have already been matched to their children! Please pray, on behalf of the waiting Nepali children and their waiting forever families, that the Ministry in Nepal would be able to weed out the corruption and resume issuing referrals and travel dates in a respectable, honorable, above-reproach manner.